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Driving Wheels : worth upgrading from DFGT to G29 or G920?
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Fakeman_Pretendname Nov 25, 2018
Hi,

I've been using a Logitech Driving Force GT for a year or so, and I'm tempted to upgrade to a wheel with an H-Shifter and clutch, whilst we've got some "black friday" offers on.

Both the G29 and G920 are on sale at PC World for £179.99 (including shifter) link here- which is cheaper than I've seen them for ages, and cheaper than I can find a 2nd hand G27.

Roughly speaking they're the same thing, but one has Playstation buttons, and one has Xbox buttons - but they're subtly different devices, and looking through old forum messages etc, they've both had compatibility problems in the past or previously needed adjustments or tweaks to get running with certain games. I'm under the impression they're both totally fine now, and in the kernal by default.

My DFGT just works perfectly with anything I throw at it, so I'm sort of hoping/assuming it'd be the same here - but if so, is one of the G29 or G920 better than the other? Is the Linux compatibility better on one than the other?

Does anyone have any experience or recommendation with these?

In case it matters, they'd mostly be used for these games:

  • Dirt Rally

  • F1 2017

  • Euro Truck Simulator 2

  • GRID Autosport

  • My Summer Car (with the swapping Unity executables

  • Various older driving games through Wine/PlayonLinux

  • Anything else, probably released by Feral that has cars in it



Many thanks if you're able to help or recommend!
Xpander Nov 25, 2018
G27 is better in terms of support on linux afaik (ltwheelconf and the like if you need some configs, though you can change wheel range with kernel parameters directly also), but you can run G29 in G27 mode also iirc.
I have DFGT as well and its great, but kinda feels cheap. Its been working great for 2 years though.
Fakeman_Pretendname Nov 26, 2018
Cheers for this. I've gone for the G29 of the two - there seemed to be more reports of it working properly, though as far as I can gather, they're actually both fine these days. A lot has changed in a few years.

I'd used ltwheelconfig and the newer parameter settings with the DFGT (generally when I want full rotation for ETS2 and smallest rotation for F12017). It should work exactly the same with the G29 from what I gather.

Incidentally, there's a small GUI application for changing range now - pyLinuxWheel - though I've not tried it, and not sure if it can control the extra parameters/settings like ltwheelconfig used to. Still, looks convenient for switching the range.

For anyone searching for a similar question in future - if I have any problems, I'll mention them here. If I say nothing, assume it works perfectly :)
Xpander Nov 26, 2018
Ohh ok. ltwheelconf hasn't been updated like 8 years (unless theres a fork of it somewhere). And last i checked it didnt work with G29, but if things have changed, then fine. Yeah the wheel itself works great, kernel drivers are all available. Thanks for the pyLinuxWheel suggestion.

Also let us know how it works with games you play. I'm specially interested how it does in DiRT Rally.
Fakeman_Pretendname Nov 26, 2018
I would have preferred a G27 if possible, but they're very rarely available these days, and normally for >£200 2nd hand - you do sometimes see them on ebay for ~£100, but normally on the condition you go and collect them from someone's house at the other side of the country (£100 travel costs). I sort of wish I'd got one a few years ago.

But yeah, you're right about the ltwheelconf- I didn't realise it was so out of date! I still used it relatively recently, because it was easier to remember the commands than the "/sys/bus/hid/drivers/logitech/" stuff. It still works fine with the DFGT.

Also, I since found Liam's article on using a G29 from earlier this year, which seems to suggest it's fine, but to set it into G27 mode for Dirt Rally. I imagine it'll work fine for Dirt Rally, though I'll still be a poor driver :)
Ehvis Nov 26, 2018
The G29 is effectively the same as a G27. The only reason why it would work "less" is because software decided on artificial restrictions because it doesn't know the "name" of the wheel.

In terms of driver and firmware, the G920 is actually superior because it supports all features of the wheel (and the force feedback system as a whole) and not just part of it like the other wheels. However, I think that only ETS2/ATS make use of those additional force types and the Linux implementation is a bit problematic.

There are actually implementations of the full functionality for all Logitech wheels, but they require a complete overhaul of the force feedback driver system. The more I worked on the FF system, the more I realised how problematic it really is.
Fakeman_Pretendname Nov 27, 2018
Thanks for this - I think there's still time to switch the order before it's confirmed/delivered - would you recommend the G920 over the G29, or in current state would they be roughly interchangeable? They're both listed (or available with workarounds) for everything I'd want to play (and considering Feral support, I'm going to assume some future support too).

Also, out of interest, what was the FF thing that you worked on? I bet I've used it, so I assume a massive thank you is in order too! :)
Ehvis Nov 27, 2018
The hardware of the G920 and G29 are pretty much identical. However, the G29 has more buttons on the wheel than the G920 does and the G29 has an RPM led strip. Both share the same pedals and optional shifter. Note that the pedals have a very stiff brake, which is supposed to be nice for racing, but not so nice for things like truck sims.

On the firmware level, the G29 is identical to the G27 in every aspect when in PS3 mode, which is the one supported by the driver. It basically uses a short packet communication protocol which limits the accuracy of the data it can send to the wheel. Which means that things like hardware spring stiffness is defined in only 4 bit numbers.

The G920 is a HID++ device that does not have any restrictions and uses 16 bit values for everything. It also supports up to 64 parallel effects while the other can only do 4. The weird thing is that the HID++ protocol requires processing of feedback from the wheel, which effectively breaks the error reporting of the FF system.

The bigger difference is the following. The FF system (which is basically a copy from the Windows system) supports a number of effect types. These are: constant force, springs, dampers, friction, inertia, periodic effects (sine, saw tooth, etc). Logitech wheels support most of those (only friction and inertia are faked), but everything up to the G29 *only* supports constant force. It is just the G920 driver that supports everything. However, practically this is not much of a problem since most sims will calculate their own physics and condense it into a single constant force output. As mentioned earlier, on Linux only ETS2/ATS are different as far as I know. No idea about Windows.

So which one is better? Technically the G920. But since it isn't really used, it does not make much difference and the choice is probably best made based on other factors like what button layout you prefer and whether you have an intention to use it on either xbox one or ps4.

My work on the FF system is primarily the G920 driver that is currently in the kernel. Other than that I worked on replacements for the other Logitech drivers and an asynchronous communication system, but those are experimental and are currently only available through the "linuxff" Steam group.
Bard Nov 27, 2018
I have been using G29 with the shifter for over a year now for Dirt Rally, Euro Truck Simulator 2 and F1 2015 and it works fine as far as I can tell. For some reason Dirt Rally forgets my settings so I have to set up the wheel each time when I connect the wheel, and that is really annoying, but I am pretty sure that it does not have anything to do with the wheel itself.
Fakeman_Pretendname Nov 28, 2018
That's some great information thanks, and really interesting to read about - thanks for giving the time for a thorough answer :)

I don't have any consoles, so I'm only using it with Linux, so I guess based on your description that on the surface it doesn't matter so much between the two - though behind the scenes there may be some advantage in using the G920 in future games, even if nothing is making use of the extra features at the moment. I've contacted the customer support to see if I can switch the order, but I won't worry too much if they can't change it over now - as Bard says, G29 seems like it works with everything I'm playing currently anyway - and for me, it's mainly about getting a clutch pedal and gear shifter as an upgrade to the DFGT.

As for your work on the Force Feedback - that's amazing. I use the linuxff driver for ETS2, so I must say thank you for your work on this and I'm glad we have people like you with the skills and time to do this work for the rest of us to enjoy - you've genuinely had an impact on my enjoyment of gaming, which is essential to my de-stressing after work :)
Just an update, I got them to change the order and got the G920. There's a few oddities with the presets for Dirt Rally & Grid Autosport, but they were fixable in the xml files - I'm going to email Feral about it anyway - but in case someone else had the same problem, they had "back" and "button 3" both assigned to the same buttons i.e. 0, 1, 1, 2 instead of 0, 1, 2, 3. Also, the buttons to switch through liveries or weather weren't assigned to anything - I copied the controls from another file. Should someone else have the same issue, I can send my xml files or explain which bits I altered.

Other than that, it works beautifully. Everything was detected and perfectly working in ETS2 - though I did find a problem with adjusting the in-game FFB settings caused a crash - but the telemetry FFB plugin I used to use with the DFGT still works fine for now.

My Summer Car (with swapped Unity Executables) and Revhead both work perfectly well.
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